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Authors' Groups in Five Countries Launch a Global Ethical AI Charter for the Creative Industries

The Society of Authors, Authors Guild, ASA and partners want publishers, agents and prize bodies to pledge consent, disclosure and fair pay when they use generative AI.

The Publishing Times Staff · October 14, 2026 · 5 min read

Authors' Groups in Five Countries Launch a Global Ethical AI Charter for the Creative Industries

What is the new charter? Authors' organizations in five countries have published a voluntary Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries, a set of commitments that publishers, agents, prize bodies and other industry groups can sign to show how they will and won't use generative AI. The UK's Society of Authors announced the launch on October 14, 2026, and the Australian Society of Authors posted its own announcement the same day.

The partners are the Society of Authors, the Creators' Rights Alliance in the UK, the Authors Guild in the United States, the Australian Society of Authors, the Writers' Union of Canada and the New Zealand Society of Authors. Their pitch is simple: governments have not regulated AI, so the industry should set its own floor.

The launch came as creators' groups met in London for the second Creators' Emergency Summit on October 13, a day of sessions on how creators can defend their livelihoods in the age of generative AI.

What signatories promise

The full text sits on the charter page. It builds on UNESCO's 10 principles of responsible AI and adapts the CLEAR framework from the Brave New World? report published by the Society of Authors, the Independent Society of Musicians, Equity, the Association of Illustrators and the Association of Photographers. CLEAR stands for consent, licensing (not scraping), ethical use, accountability, and rights and remuneration.

An organization that signs commits to a handful of practical steps:

  • train its staff on what generative AI is and how to use it responsibly
  • run risk assessments on any AI use case, covering IP, data protection, the effect on creators, and diversity and sustainability policies
  • write an AI permitted-use and disclosure policy, and publish it on its website
  • get a creator's consent before using their work to train a model or to make a new work from it, and not put existing or commissioned work into AI systems without the rightsholder's permission
  • say so when AI-generated content forms a material part of a published work

The transparency runs both ways. Signatories say they expect creators to tell them when generative AI has materially shaped a piece of work.

The charter also asks signatories to favour AI services from developers that license their training data and are open about it, where a real alternative exists. And it includes a line many authors will want their publishers to read twice: environmental and infrastructure costs "should never be a reason not to pay creators fairly for their work."

It is explicit that signing is not an endorsement of the technology. The text lists the use of creative work "without transparency, permission or payment," the risk of creators being displaced, market dilution and environmental damage as serious concerns, and says truly ethical AI depends on fixing them. Signatories can withdraw at any time, and the partners plan to review the charter every year.

Who is backing it

Kazuo Ishiguro, Tracy Chevalier and Kester Brewin all lent their names to the launch. "It's of vital importance that we in the creative industry have a Charter like this to guide, discipline and inspire us," Ishiguro said in the Society of Authors announcement.

Chevalier was more pointed about the book trade itself. "From authors using AI to write their books for them to publishers publishing AI generated works with no author involved, the book world has a big problem with our relationship to AI," she said.

Anna Ganley, who runs the Society of Authors and chairs the Creators' Rights Alliance, called the charter a response to "the vacuum of any meaningful policy from governments." She urged the UK government to use its G20 presidency to show it is willing to regulate AI and enforce copyright law, and admitted the charter's limits: it "won't solve the largescale societal threats that unregulated generative AI poses."

Lucy Hayward, CEO of the Australian Society of Authors, made the same point in plainer terms. The charter "won't help to address the large-scale theft of authors' work by Big Tech to train their tools," she said, "but it is a step towards preventing further harm and supporting responsible best practice in the creative industries."

Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, who chairs the Society of Authors' board and writes as Sam Blake, said she will encourage all of her publishers to sign.

When PT checked the charter page, the signatory list was short, with Alma Books among the first publishers named.

Why it matters for authors

It gives you a question to ask. Before you sign with a publisher, agent or audio producer, you can now ask whether they have signed this charter and where their AI policy is published. A clear yes, or a clear no, tells you something.

Consent is written in. The strongest clause for working writers is the promise not to feed your existing or commissioned work into AI systems without permission. That goes further than many contracts do today.

Disclosure cuts both ways. If your publisher signs, expect to be asked whether AI materially shaped your manuscript, cover or translation. Be ready with a straight answer.

It is voluntary, and the groups behind it say so. Nothing here binds AI developers or replaces the copyright fights in courts and parliaments. What it can do is set a public standard that authors and their organizations can point to when a company says it is "using AI responsibly."

Sources